


Brutal Beginnings

by MelyndaR



Series: Insurrection Trilogy [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23672200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/pseuds/MelyndaR
Summary: “I was, Gres,” Sam choked out, determined not to cry again. “Pregnant. Two months pregnant.” She gestured helplessly to the scanner, informing him, “You had a son. But… I lost him. I’m sorry.”Gres stepped closer, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close enough that she could hear his alien heartbeat. “Don’t you dare,” he said, quiet and fierce, her constant point of calm and love no matter what the universe threw at them.
Relationships: Greskrendtregk/Samantha Wildman
Series: Insurrection Trilogy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704517
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the beginning of the other trilogy/series that ties in with my "Don't Fear the Fall" series. It starts pre-ST:V, and shows the story of how Greskrendtregk and Samantha Wildman met, fell in love, and started down the journey to parenthood... at least in this universe.  
> Because there's various "things" in this story, I will be adding content warnings at the head of each chapter.

_ Ekaris III, 2368: _

“We get fuel, we get food and other supplies, and we get the hell out. No socialization, no being noticed. If you don’t think you can manage that, you stay aboard the ship ‘til the rest of us come back. Any questions?”

Despite the seriousness of what they were about to do, Gres smiled to himself at Torres’ succinct, overly-blunt speech, being careful to keep his head bowed over the map of the town they were about to enter in hopes that his superiors wouldn’t notice his expression.

The commander, Chakotay, caught him anyway, asking dryly, “Anything you want to add, Gres?”

“No, sir,” Gres replied, not anywhere near as put off by his commander’s gruff tone and stern expression as he knew some of the newer members of their crew would’ve been. Chakotay might’ve been his superior on this ragtag crew, on this equally ratty ship, the S.S. _Karma_ , but they’d worked together too long for either one of them to get under the other’s skin most of the time.

“Then let’s get this done,” Torres said, hitting Gres in the stomach with a small phaser – her way of both handing it to him and showing her irritation with him – as she bypassed him. “And remember, we do this as quickly as possible.”

* * *

_ This was why she didn’t drink, if nothing else,  _ Sam thought, frowning as she watched a couple of her class-mates struggle to hold each other up while they walked in front of her. _She would never understand the allure of celebrating something – like their graduation from university – by getting so smashingly drunk that they wouldn’t remember it the next morning._

Still, if she hadn’t been so embarrassed to be seen with them – _why had she let her roommate convince her this was going to be fun?_ – she would’ve laughed when the two girls plowed straight into some poor man who’d been trying to cross the street in front of them. Until she realized what the “poor man” had just done to her roommate.

She bit back her first instinct, to snap at him and snatch her roommate’s wallet directly from his pants’ pocket where he’d just stowed it after slipping it from the inebriated girl’s purse. That would’ve startled him, kicked up his fight or flight instinct if he had such a thing, and he didn’t look like she could take him in a scuffle. Better to play it a little cooler, then. 

Sam adjusted her stance and walk so that she was stumbling along in the same manner as her friends, a mimic of a drunken walk that she had seen far too many times from her stepfather growing up. As she bypassed the pickpocket, she stumbled into him just a little too hard, just enough to catch his attention and distract him while she reached into his pocket and delicately slipped the wallet back out.

“Sorry, mister,” she said on a high, brainless laugh before making a show of teetering in a perilous run after her friends.

It had been a few years since she’d exercised this particular skill she had, but she couldn’t deny the adrenaline rush she got at the feeling that she’d beaten him at his own game. Not that she planned to be picking any more pockets any time soon, now that she’d graduated with a respectable xenobiology degree.

* * *

Gres was startled when he felt the petite hand slide carefully into his pocket, but in the darkness it wasn’t hard to hide his expression from her. He could’ve grabbed her wrist, or swung a fist and made sure she left him alone, wallet or not, but part of the reason he’d gotten along with Commander Chakotay – and not Torres – for so long was because he had _rules of conduct_ , his own lines that he didn’t cross, like the commander did. And he didn’t make a habit of hitting women unless they were aligned with the Cardassians. His “chivalry” was one of the many things about him that occasionally annoyed Torres.

Still, he decided, he didn’t have to be _too_ chivalrous here if he didn’t want to be. _Could be fun that way._

In a couple wide strides, he’d caught up with the trio of giggling girls, saying leisurely, “Hello, ladies.” He threw in a lecherous look just for kicks as he scanned their faces. _One of these things was not like the rest_ ; the one who’d picked his pocket was not drunk, but her friends clearly were. 

As if to prove his point, the two drunk girls fell into a fit of obnoxious laughter, one of them tripping over the other in a bid to get closer to him. 

Gres kept his gaze on the crafty blonde who’d stolen his stolen wallet, pointing out, “I think you have something of mine.”

“Definitely not,” she replied. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

He pointed to the wallet she held, asking brazenly, “Then why do you have my wallet?”

The two girls gasped, turning to the blonde as one of them said, “Gods, Sam, I thought you said you’d gotten past that!”

“We could’ve paid for your drinks; I didn’t realize you didn’t have the money,” the other offered, her eyes getting wet with pity for her friend.

“Sam” turned to her companions, her face riddled with disgust and exasperation as she asked, “Are you _kidding_ me?!”

Gres could’ve laughed at the scene unfolding in front of him. Instead, the moment Sam turned, he wrenched the wallet from her hand and bolted. _Why not fight for it? It wasn’t like he was going to be around long enough for the authorities on this planet to find him, and something told him Sam wouldn’t be comfortable with cops, either._ Nobody who could pick a pocket that confidently was.

Given the heels and sparkling dress she was wearing, Gres hadn’t expected Sam to give chase, but she did. Then he did laugh, darting to the left and down the first alley he saw – all the better to lose her, in the dark and her wearing heels on cracked cobbles. When the click of her heels stopped behind him, though, he made a stupid, rooky mistake, glancing behind him – and tripping ingloriously over a broken cobblestone that jutted jaggedly from the dirt.

He managed little more than a string of curses as he landed in a heap at the side of the alley. He comforted himself with the thought that he still had the wallet – he’d won – as, lacking any sort of light, he skimmed his fingertips over his throbbing ankle in an attempt to assess the damage. His fingertips came away sticky with a line of blood, and he cursed again. 

To add insult to literal injury, Sam had caught up with him, staring down at him now in the darkness, her eyes bright pinpricks, with her high heels in one hand. _She’d paused to take them off; of course she had. Smart move._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here there be another drunk, and a little bit of sexual harassment (but Gres takes care of it).

“You okay?” she asked guardedly, noting his strained breathing.

He grunted wordlessly in response, tucking the wallet behind his back.

Sam huffed out an incredulous laugh and rooted around in her purse for a second before producing a penlight. She clicked it on and knelt down in front of him, and in the circle of low light, Gres’ gaze skittered guiltily away instead of looking up her dress.

She snorted a second time, before asking dryly, “Are you hurt?” even as she shone her light around to check him out for herself.

“Ankle,” he said begrudgingly. “But I’ll be fine.”

As if to prove his point, he tried to stand, but catching sight of his ankle, she rapped him with her knuckles where it hurt worst, and he collapsed back onto the ground with another grunt of pain. “What’d you do that for?!”

“What’d you steal a drunk girl’s wallet for?” she shot back without looking at him, digging something else out of her purse.

“Because she was practically asking for it.”

Sam paused to consider that, then actually nodded her agreement before pulling a roll of gauze out of her purse.

“What do you have in there?” he asked. “A whole first aid kit?”

“Given the roommates I have? Yes.”

He chuckled to disguise a hiss as she pulled his shoe off.

“Besides, I’m a xenobiologist. Now hold still while I wrap this before it swells anymore. You sprained your ankle.”

“First, you’re stealing from me, then you’re patching me up?”

“You stole from me first – or at least from my roommate.”

“Which makes you all the more intriguing,” Gres pointed out, not sure where the admission came from, but realizing how it sounded too late to take it back.

She gave him a side-eye in the darkness. “In my experience,” she said lightly. “The company of pickpockets is more pleasant than the company of drunks.”

She’d all but made a joke out of her statement, but Gres sensed a piece of backstory buried somewhere in there. With his tender limb in her hands, he didn’t care to push her, lest she punch his ankle again.

She worked in silence and with practiced speed, and a moment later she handed his shoe to him, recommending, “Work the laces looser, then put that back on as tight as you can stand it.” Shining her penlight around the alley, she stood up and worked a tall, crusted piece of pipe from a nearby pile of rejected appliance pieces. She knelt back down, placing the pipe at his side as she ordered, “Lean on this as you walk back… wherever you came from.”

“Thanks.”

She raised her eyebrows, her eyes flashing with amusement. “As a token of your gratitude, I will be taking this back,” she announced, slipping the wallet out from behind him and into her purse, then standing before he could stop her.

He didn’t fight her about it this time, leveraging his way onto his feet with the pipe as she began to walk away. “Let me walk you home?” he offered to her retreating figure in a show of the chivalry that Torres would’ve called a waste of time, and it probably was, given the self-imposed time crunch his crew was working under. “A lady shouldn’t be walking back alleys alone like this at this hour.”

She stopped, her blonde hair flipping around her shoulder she turned back to him so quickly. “You shouldn’t have made me chase you back here, then.”

“Humor me?” he requested, taking an experimental step closer.

She tracked his movements with the expression of someone who was far too used to having to be wary of others and shook her head. “Not with your ankle in that state. Besides, you’ve figured out enough about me to know two things: I’m not a ‘lady,’ and I can take care of myself.”

She turned back around and kept walking – and not back in the direction of her roommates, either. Gres had absolutely no idea why he followed her anyway, outside of the fact that something told him she deserved to have someone look out for her occasionally. They really had parted ways in a crappy part of this town, and he really did want to make sure she got home safe.

In any case, walking with the pipe like he was, she could hear that he was following her, and when she didn’t say anything about it all the way back to her dorm, he took that as his permission to keep doing what he was. In fact, when she’d turned under a streetlight, just enough for him to see her profile properly, he’d thought she’d caught her smiling at him. Maybe.

* * *

_Damn, he hoped he’d been right about her,_ Gres thought, the weight of Commander Chakotay leaning against him seeming to get heavier and heavier as he pushed the chime on the college house that he’d already been to once tonight. Or at least he’d _seen_ it, when he’d followed Sam here.

Helping to hold his injured commander’s weight, Gres’ ankle hurt so badly it felt like it was going to give out on him at any second, and on Commander Chakotay’s other side, Torres shifted to try and take on more of his weight herself.

“What are we doing here?” Chakotay grunted. “You said you knew where you could get salve for phaser burns.”

And that was when Gres thought to hope that the xenobiologist he’d stumbled upon actually did possess such a thing in her college dorm.

To add to his worries, as he moved to push the chime a second time, a crash sounded from inside the house, from somewhere very near the door.

“Cole, stop! Get out!” someone – _Sam_ , Gres thought – shouted.

Gres barely had time to shrug Commander Chakotay off as the commander and Torres ducked into a shadowed corner of the porch before the door flew open and a man was bodily shoved out of the house. Like with her roommates earlier in the night, Gres could practically smell the liquor coming off this idiot.

“Oh, come on, sis,” Cole slurred. “I just wanna help you celebrate your graduation!”

Sam shoved him again, and he teetered perilously on the edge of the porch steps. “Next time you touch me,” she said. “ _At all_ , I will break your hand. Get off my porch right now.”

Cole snarled at her, animal-like, with his teeth bared as he said from between them, “Look at you now. As soon as you get a degree, you’re just too high and holy for your family, is that it?”

He reached for her, and before he’d given it conscious thought, Gres grabbed the man’s wrist, twisted it until he could feel the bones grinding together under his fingers. Sam gasped as he stepped into the porch light, saying levelly, “The lady told you to go away. Do so, or I will pick you up and throw you out myself, understood?”

Cole whined like the hurt dog that Gres figured he was, nodding as he tried to writhe away, and when Gres released him, he ran.

Sam released a shaky breath behind him, but when Gres turned towards her, she was already glaring daggers up at him. “What the _hell_ do you want?”

In answer, Gres gestured to the wounded Maquis fighter, sitting slouched against her house.

Her eyes widened for a second as she looked at him, then between Torres and Gres as she groaned, “Ye gods!” She waved them forward, adding a couple more expletives, but then following it up with the “come on, get him in here,” that Gres had been hoping for. As she held open the door for them while Gres and Torres helped the commander inside, she informed Gres, “But, for the record, you have made the night of my graduation the most senselessly dramatic day ever.”

He gave her a look, volleying back, “Somehow I doubt that was _entirely_ my fault.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight reference to assault here.

“First door on the right, put him on the bed,” Sam ordered, bypassing them to go to a room further down the hall. “And stay quiet! If my roommate wakes up to this, they’ll pass out, and contrary to whatever you may believe, my house is not an emergency medical facility, and I don’t feel like dealing with that many fall-related injuries tonight.” She came into the bedroom where Gres and Torres had laid Commander Chakotay, her arms full of towels that she dumped at the end of the bed. “Speaking of which, what happened to him?”

“Burns,” Torres said shortly.

“What kind?” Sam asked, her focused attitude making her just as short with Torres as Torres was with the rest of the world as she took what looked like an actual medical bag from her closet.

“The hot kind.”

Sam huffed at Torres, glancing at Gres for real answers as she tore open what remained of the front of Commander Chakotay’s shirt.

“I don’t know; I didn’t even hear what happened before I thought to bring him here, and here we came.”

“Phaser fire,” Chakotay gritted out.

Sam rolled her eyes to the ceiling, muttering what was either more curses or a prayer, but then she grabbed a tin from her medical bag, opening it and spreading it around the edges of the worst of the burns as she asked, “You do realize I’m not an actual doctor, right?”

“You’re the closest to it that any of us knew of,” Gres said a little apologetically. “And he needs help.”

“He _needs_ a proper doctor, but something tells me you’re not going to go to one of those, are you?” Her tone was tense, but she kept working on the commander.

“No,” Gres replied.

“Do I even want know what you people are?” she asked.

“Probably not,” Torres answered.

Wisely, that was when Sam stopped asking questions. At least for a minute. “I never got your name,” she said, glancing at Gres again as she finished with the tin and pulled a thick wad of some sort of cotton from her bag.

Torres glared him into silence before he could answer. “The less you know, the better,” she informed Sam instead.

“I’m sure that’s true,” Sam allowed. “But I would like to know who to thank for sparing me my stepbrother’s crap tonight.”

_ Stepbrother.  _ Gres filed the information away, even while he glanced away from her. “No thanks necessary.”

He caught the way her lips thinned at some response that she didn’t voice, but none of them said anything else. She soaked the cotton with some sour-smelling liquid, informing the commander, “This will hurt.”

“Great,” he replied, turning his head and bracing for what was to come.

When she was done dabbing the stuff on the burns that peppered the commander’s arms, he released the breath he’d been holding and pointed at a photo tacked to the wall that had caught his attention. “Who’s that?”

Sam glanced at the photo, at the commander, then turned back to her work in silence, a shadow falling over her face. 

Still, following his semi-famous instincts for handling people, the commander asked again, “Humor me. He’s wearing a Starfleet uniform, isn’t he?”

Sam nodded, offering only, “My dad.”

“That kid in his arms is you?”

“Yeah.”

Gres grinned crookedly at the picture, then at Sam. “You were cute.”

A slight blush tinted her cheeks, but she didn’t look up from her medical bag. He got the sudden feeling that she was hiding behind that bag, in a way, behind her work. “Thanks.”

“I was Starfleet once,” Commander Chakotay offered.

“Stop talking,” Sam ordered, and Gres blinked in surprise at someone being so forthright with the commander before he remembered that Sam had no idea who the man was or what rank he held, even if it was only an unofficially official rank within the Maquis movement. Still, Sam’s eyes had lit with curiosity, and she asked, “What branch?”

Since Commander Chakotay was under orders not to talk, Torres answered grudgingly, “Command.”

“You can’t tell because the photo’s black and white,” Sam said, a softness to her voice that Gres hadn’t heard yet tonight. “But my dad was a scientist, a physician.”

“Like you,” Gres offered.

“No. I very distinctly remember telling you I’m not a doctor. I’m a xenobiologist.”

“Meaning you’re uncomfortable treating yourself and him,” Torres nodded to the commander. “But you would be comfortable treating myself and him.” She gestured towards Gres.

“Sort of, but not really. I’m a… make observations and write papers kind of doctor, not a stitch people up kind.”

“Though clearly you can in a pinch,” Commander Chakotay pointed out. “You’re doing a good job on me.”

“You’re only saying that because that salve has pain reliever in it.”

“Still, thanks for your help.”

“Don’t thank me yet; I haven’t told you the bad news.”

The three Maquis paused for a split second before Torres demanded, “What ‘bad news?’”

“In order to heal these burns, he’s going to need a second layer of salve put on them in the morning. You’ll have to stay overnight, and I get the feeling that you’re not going to like that idea.”

“You’re right,” Torres agreed. “We don’t. So, give us the tin, and we’ll do it ourselves once we’re on our way.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” Sam said, and Gres believed her apology, judging by the look on her face. “Anything medical is _not_ easy to come by on this planet, and I’ve had to build my own medical kit. I can’t just give things away.”

“Then maybe we have something we can trade you for it,” Torres offered, but even as she said it, Gres knew that was a lie. They’d only come down to a planet so close to the Cardassian border because they were _that_ desperate for supplies; there was nothing on _Karma_ that anyone would want, and what they did have, they couldn’t spare anyway.

“B’Elanna,” the commander said from the bed, taking charge just by the tone of his voice even as he gave Sam Torres’ name, something Torres herself never would’ve done. “Go back to the ship now. Gres and I will wait on the surface overnight and come back up in the morning.”

Torres was already arguing with Commander Chakotay with her eyes alone, but he won, and the Klingon stalked silently out into the night.

“’Ship?’ ‘The surface?’ What are you guys, space renegades?” Sam queried, but it was clear that by now she didn’t expect an answer. 

Still, she was close enough to the truth that, when she glanced his way, Gres was pretty sure his expression gave something away, because Sam fell silent as her eyes began to swim with unspoken thoughts. 

“My friend was right when she said the less you know, the better,” Chakotay informed her kindly.

Still, there wasn’t much more that the two men could say that would help their situation, and they watched the pieces fall together behind her intelligent eyes – an at least partially militarily-trained crew outside the law and this close to the border could only mean a couple of things. To her credit, Sam didn’t say anything about it until she was done stitching the commander up. She made sure he was as comfortable as he could be with his burns only partially treated for the time being, then grabbed the things she needed to sleep on the couch.

Gres followed her out of her room, saying in a near-whisper, “We didn’t mean to imply that we planned on staying at _your_ house. You could get in trouble for harboring us.”

Sam gave him the same thoughtful, thin-lipped look that she had earlier, then shook her head, looking away. “You don’t realize what you saved me from tonight. I owe you one.”

“What?” Gres asked, something discomfiting hitting him in the stomach. “You mean your stepbrother? You looked like you had him well under-control.”

She shook her head again. “He could’ve and would’ve forced his way back into the house. So, thank you for helping me…” she tilted her head to the side, studying him as she asked, “Gres, was it?”

He nodded with a small smile. “Greskrendtregk is my full name, actually, but no human has ever been able to say it correctly, so on a ship full of humans… yeah, my friends call me Gres.”

“Greskrendtregk,” Sam repeated with a shrug as she said his name perfectly. “That’s not so hard to say.”

And that was the moment Gres fell stupidly, completely in love.

Then she asked calmly, “So, tell me, Gres, are you ‘space renegades’ as in space _pirates_ , or _Maquis_?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings here, just Maquis falling in love!

Gres chose to believe that it was pain that woke his commander up before he was awake himself the next morning. He and Chakotay were friendly enough – friends, even – but sharing a bed with his commander had been one of the weirdest experiences in his life as a member of _Karma_ ’s crew, and he hadn’t slept well.

But when he did wake, it was to the soft murmur of Commander Chakotay’s and Sam’s voices.

“I’m just saying that you didn’t turn us out into the night even with knowing what Gres told you, and you’re still helping me, and you’re good at this medic gig, and from what you’ve told me this morning you don’t _dis_ agree with the Maquis cause, and we could use someone like you aboard my ship. And, to be honest, the way your brother was acting towards you last night, the way you talked about your roommates… and I’m genuinely asking here – what do you have that would compel you to stay here?”

Gres froze before they could notice he was awake. If the commander was working on the angle that it sounded like he was, Gres didn’t want to do a single thing to mess him up.

“I have goals, you know,” Sam pointed out.

There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the sound of ripping cloth – a makeshift bandage – and Gres could tell that it bothered the commander when he finally admitted, “And I have people that need _help_. If Gres hadn’t known where to find you last night, I could’ve died. I know you don’t think you’re good at this, but you’re the best option I’ve got, and I _need_ you. Please.” There was another pregnant paused, and then Commander Chakotay added on a lighter note while just barely nudging Gres’ arm, “Besides, we’ve got this guy.”

Sam laughed, and the sound was watery in a way that made Gres’ eight-chambered heart ache. “Great selling point, that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Chakotay grinned.

Gres cracked his eyes open just enough to watch Sam through his eyelashes, to see her timid smile as she shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

“Does that mean you’re going to come with us, take the time to find out?”

Sam looked over where Gres lay, out her cracked bedroom window. “Not for him,” she said after a minute’s thought. “But because that’s where I can do some good at this screwed up border.”

“Good enough for me,” Chakotay replied brightly.

Gres bit his lip to keep from beaming.

* * *

After coming to an agreement with the man who’d introduced himself as Commander Chakotay as he told her about his crew, mission, and ship, the _Karma,_ Sam packed as quickly and as lightly as she could while still feeling practical and prepared. Toiletries, a week’s worth of clothes, her medical bag, and two photos were shoved into the same worn carpetbag she’d come to college with; at the insistence of some unshakable, hard-won instinct, she filled another knapsack with food, and walked out of her dorm housing with Commander Chakotay and Gres.

By the time they reached a back alley near where she’d met Gres the night before, she was carrying her carpetbag in one hand and helping to support the now-nearly-wheezing commander with the other, and on Commander Chakotay’s other side, Gres was similarly shouldering Sam’s knapsack on one side and helping support his commander on the other.

Gres looked around the dark, abandoned alley, before muttering impatiently, “Come on, come on, come on.”

Before Sam could ask him what he was waiting for, the two men were beamed away from her, and she looked quickly around her, wondering what to do now. _Sure, whoever was aboard Karma wouldn’t have known to beam her aboard, too, but did she wait for them to do so? For how long? And sure, she could make it back to the dorm from here without a problem, but she was a little aggravated that they had taken her food, and that knapsack had been her dad’s._

Before she could decide what to do, she was beamed up, carpetbag and all, and in a moment was rapidly assessing her surroundings on one of the oldest starships she’d ever seen still in commission. _Or… probably not exactly “commission,”_ she allowed to herself.

“…Change of plans!” Commander Chakotay was informing B’Elanna Torres brightly.

As Sam watched, the Klingon turned to Gres instead, her hands folded and her expression displaying enough obvious irritation to make Sam tense for a fight. “We do not have _room_ aboard for your la—”

Commander Chakotay intervened with a sharp glance at Torres as he said in a firm tone, “It was my decision. I asked her to join us. She’s a medic, and she’ll be useful to us.”

“Where are we going to _put_ her?” Torres asked again, not having bothered with lowering her voice since the four of them were alone in the room. She waved a hand between Gres and the commander, asking dryly, “Are you two planning on sharing a bed every night, so you can free up one for her?” The commander rolled his eyes, jaw clenching as he quelled Torres, at least a little, with a look. Her voice was lowered as she continued, “Or, here’s an idea, maybe Gres will share his twin-sized bunk with her?”

Sam took a step back towards the transporter pad that she’d barely even stepped away from, already wondering what she’d gotten herself into.

The other three noticed her movement, and when Gres registered _whatever_ it was that he saw in her expression, he took a step towards her, promising warily, “She’s joking. I swear. She’s an ass, and it was a bad joke, but she was joking.”

“Sam,” Commander Chakotay said calmly. “Why don’t you come this way? We can show you around the ship and introduce you to the crew, and you can get your supplies set up at the examining table. Okay? I need you here, remember?”

“And at this point you know a little too much for me to be comfortable just releasing you back onto the street where you’re free to go to the authorities,” Torres added.

Gres shot daggers at Torres as Sam snorted at the idea, saying, “The ‘authorities’ wouldn’t do anything around here.”

“They would about a Maquis ship, I promise,” Commander Chakotay muttered.

“So, please,” Gres extended a hand to her. “Let me show you around the ship, m’lady?”

“I told you, I’m not a lady,” Sam reminded him. Still, she stepped closer – and slipped the handle of her carpetbag into his hand.

Torres chuckled in amusement.

“We don’t have to share that opinion,” Gres pointed out, swinging her carpetbag over his shoulder and waving her after him with his other had as he walked away from the transporter.

With only him in earshot now, she murmured, “If you don’t share my opinion yet, all that means is that you don’t realize what you saved me from last night.”

Gres shot her a look so full of pity that it made her jaw clench, made her irrationally angry. “I think I do,” he replied quietly. “Doesn’t mean I have to let it matter to me, and it doesn’t mean you’re not a lady in my eyes.”

Sam wanted to snap at him, say something sharp enough to make him change the subject, but he didn’t exactly deserve that, so she settled for saying something unexpected instead, informing him honestly, “You’re either really creepy or really sweet, and I haven’t figured out which yet.”

His resounding laughter echoed off the walls of the ship as they left the transporter room and came onto the bridge, making a couple people at workstations turn to look at them curiously. “Let me know when you figure it out, will you?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-typical violence and more Maquis falling in love!

It was Sam’s idea for her to sleep at her workstation, and she didn’t see how it was a _bad_ idea, except for the fact that she was essentially sleeping out in the open air of the ship. Still, given that the only unclaimed “bed” when she arrived was her examination table, she was willing to take what she could get. And it didn’t work out badly for her. Her examination table had a patient on it almost all the time, but those nights were far from the first time she’d slept on the floor, and it was practical for her to be so close to the supplies she would need in an emergency. Plus, she didn’t have to sleep in the barracks-style room that the other twenty-eight crewmembers did, where sleeping with so many others would’ve made her more hyper-aware than sleeping in the open ever would, and that was more important to her than she was willing to admit to anyone.

Except maybe Gres. She was pretty sure he’d figured some of her background out anyway, on her first day aboard when she’d looked at the sleeping arrangements and suggested she remain at her workstation in the first place. He was like the commander in that way; he had a knack for sorting out human minds with as much a natural ease as her father had once had for diagnosing the issues in human bodies.

With time, Sam wasn’t even sure she minded how much he’d come to understand her. It was difficult to _keep_ him from figuring her out, after all, when he kept hanging around her as often as he did.

Whenever she said anything about his frequent presence, he rambled off something to the effect of, “You’ve yet tell me if you think I’m creepy or sweet, and I really must know, so I’m just trying to give you the most information I can so that you can make your decision.”

Every night he would swing by her workstation before going to his bunk. If she had a patient healing on her examination table, the three of them would just chat about the usual things until they were ready to sleep. If they were alone, the two of them would talk to each other, really talk – about their home worlds and childhoods, beliefs, fears and hopes, families. Little by little, they shared anything and everything with one another. Without fail, before he left her every evening, he would ask “creepy or sweet, m’lady?” and she would smile and tell him she would decide tomorrow and give him an answer if he stopped by her station the next evening.

* * *

“All I’m saying is that the whole ship already knows you two are disgustingly in love – anybody who’s been on your examination table, meaning everybody by now, know so – so I don’t see why you’re not doing anything about it.”

From across the mess hall table, Sam looked at one of her friends aboard _Karma_ , Melody, and asked while being very purposefully dense, “So?”

“ _So_ why _aren’t_ you doing anything about it?” Melody frowned at her in apparent confusion, pointing out, “He loves you, Sam; he’s sweet, and you know it.”

* * *

_He was sweet, and he did love her, and she loved him, and he was going to die, dammit, if she didn’t get out of her own head and fix him!_

Sam had been on _Karma_ for months now, she was a little too used to the feeling of someone trying to turn her into a ping-pong ball being batted back and forth whenever they were under fire, but that meant she had learned how to work under those conditions, too. So, she worked.

Melody was passed out but stable on her exam table, three of Torres’ operations crewmembers were equally stable but equally unable to be moved from where they were propped up against a wall, and Gres was laying prostrate on the floor in the main thoroughfare, dragged as close as he could get to Sam’s corner of the world. Sam was kneeling on the floor at his side, performing emergency surgery on him as she removed shards of the engineering console screen from his body where the force of the explosion had left them embedded in the lining of his stomach.

_If she didn’t hurry, he was going to lose too much blood and bleed out, and he wasn’t human; she didn’t have an even possibly compatible blood type aboard from which she could give him a transfusion._

Somebody saw what she was doing too late as they ran past, tried to jump over or around her, and booted her in the head instead. She swore as she saw stars for a minute, her vision swimming, but she made herself blink the bleariness away and remain focused on Gres. Doublechecking that she hadn’t nicked his internal organs by a small miracle of the steady hands of a doctor that she wasn’t – _don’t think about that now_ – she picked out another shard, flicked it down into a glass, and kept doing her job.

He was not allowed to die on her unfortunately proverbial operating table while she was hit with a boot _and_ with just how much she’d come to love him.

* * *

“What happened to your face?”

Two days later, the croak that came from the direction of her examination table would’ve been enough to make a less steady person scream, but Sam didn’t even drop the book she was reading, just snapped it closed and set it aside. Picking up a blood pressure gauge, she was at Gres’ side in two steps.

“I’m glad your awake,” she said softly, and as steady as her hands had been when performing surgery on him, they were trembling now as she watched the screen of the blood pressure gauge. “We were afraid—” She shook the thought free of her head, turning off the gauge when his blood pressure registered as acceptable. She turned to put it away, still not looking at him. “You lost a lot of blood the day of the skirmish; I had to perform surgery on you about seven meters from the bridge, Gres, both of us on the floor, me picking shrapnel out of you while people ran around me. It’s nearly a miracle you didn’t get an infection.”

“That’s your job, Sam. We keep telling you you’re good at it; maybe you’ll eventually believe us.”

 _He was right; that was her job here. She knew that_ … which didn’t explain why she was near tears.

“What happened to your face?” he asked again, reaching out for her, groaning as he stretched in a way he shouldn’t to grab her arm and tug her gently closer to the table.

She gingerly touched the purple bruise that wrapped around the outer side of her left eye socket. “Molinez mis-stepped during the fight, tried to jump around me, and booted me in the temple instead.”

He smiled, gently teasing as he asked, “Should I make him pay?”

“Don’t you dare. You’re not to move from this bed for at least another three days. Non-doctor’s orders.”

“Did he at least apologize?”

He had. Everyone here was a little rough around the edges – voluntary fighters in a rugged war that they all were – but they all liked her for some reason or another.

At the moment, Sam didn’t care at all about that. “Gres.” She moved her arm until his hand was wrapped around hers, still not looking at him as she said, nervous but serious, “Ask me again.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his look of confusion. “What?”

“Gres,” she laughed tearfully, and he reached up with his other hand, tenderly turning her face so that she had to meet his eyes even while he avoided touching her bruise, searching her face with obvious concern. “ _Ask me again_.”

She saw when it clicked behind his eyes what she meant. “Sweet or creepy, m’lady?” he asked with a smile that was confused and hopeful all at once.

“Sweet,” Sam replied decisively. “Very sweet.”

“Sam…” Gres requested carefully. “Kiss me.”

“Well,” Sam chuckled, brushing her tears from her eyes. There was no time or place or _reason_ for them here now. “Since you asked so nicely.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's in the tags, but I thought I'd add it here, too: there's a miscarriage in this chapter... but also more fluff.

_2369:_

Commander Chakotay married them aboard _Karma_ the next year and gave them the most precious thing he could’ve: space of their own.

“Are you sure it’s not weird to take over the commander’s quarters?” Sam asked, taking her clothes from her carpetbag and putting them into the tinny dresser that was bolted to the floor by the bed.

“You know, I’m not going to question it,” Gres decided. “We both know this is a repurposed storage room in the first place. Besides that, I am a newlywed on his wedding night, Torres had the good graces to make sure that we got a new mattress for this bed, and I intend to _thoroughly_ break it in.”

If anyone else had said such a thing to her, Sam would’ve panicked or lashed out or both, but Gres was different; he had respected her boundaries from the very beginning while simultaneously pushing her to work through them. She smirked at him to think that _now it only seemed right that he should be the one to reap the benefits of the healing that she’d worked towards._ She shut the dresser drawer, kicked her empty carpetbag under the bed, slipped off her moccasins, and fell backwards on the bed with her arms extended towards her husband. “Come here and do it, then.”

* * *

“You know,” Melody looked down at the bandage that Sam had just put on her arm, her legs swinging idly off the edge of the examination table. “For a newlywed, you’ve not been glowing very much this week.” Melody grinned as she asked, “Are you _too_ sore, or something?”

“Shut up,” Sam ordered crossly.

“Sam, what’s wrong?” Melody asked, her girlish façade falling away as she asked, “Can I help?”

“No.”

Sam leveled a sharp look at her to punctuate her reply, but Melody ignored it, trying again with, “Come on, I’m your friend, and if you’re… mad, or sad, or something, I want to help you resolve the issue.”

“I’m not mad,” Sam said dismissively. “Or sad. I’m…” she shook her head, muttering, “Worried.”

“About what?” Melody asked empathetically.

 _Melody was the sort of soft and gentle that she aspired to be,_ Sam thought to herself, sitting down on the table beside her friend as she debated telling the truth. _And the truth was_ : “I don’t even know if there’s anything to be worried about, and I don’t have the proper tools to check yet, so…” she shook her head. “There’s nothing for you to worry about, and there’s nothing for you to help me with.”

Melody watched her with narrowed eyes, asking, “Sam, are you sick?”

Sam raised her hands, hurrying to head that rumor off at the pass before it could even start. “No. Definitely not. It’s nothing like that.”

“But you think you might be?”

“No, I promise I’m perfectly healthy.” _But that might not matter if Sam’s suspicions proved correct, not by the time she could prove or disprove them with the tools she had here._

“Trouble in paradise already?” Melody guessed again.

Sam shook her head, grabbing her friend’s hands. “No. Everything is fine. Gres is fine, we are fine, I am fine, okay? I promise.”

Melody gave her a dubious look, but one of the reasons that Sam had managed to maintain a friendship with her was because she knew when to push something, but she also knew when to stop pushing it, and now was one of those times. “Okay,” she said, sliding off the exam table. She raised her bandaged arm in a lackluster wave as she walked away, adding, “Thanks for patching me up.”

* * *

 _She was overreacting,_ Sam told herself, staring down at the scanner in her lap. _They’d only been married – and having sex – for three months. Surely… not this._ But the results from the scan stared right back up at her.

“Sam?” Gres’ voice, soft and careful as his tone was, startled her so badly that she gasped and the medical scanner in her lap went skittering across the floor as she jerked in surprise.

She didn’t realize she’d been crying until she tried to talk, and she swiped a hand hastily over her eyes, swallowing before she asked, “What are you doing up? It’s two in the morning.”

“I could ask you the same question,” he pointed out, keeping his tone as level and concerned as ever as he moved to pick up the scanner without his gaze ever leaving her face. “Torres has the night shift on the bridge; she slipped right past you to get me when she heard you crying out here. You… realize you don’t have to sleep on your exam table anymore, right? That was kind of the point of Commander Chakotay surrendering his quarters to us.”

He was trying very gently to lighten her mood, but she barely heard him, her eyes fixated on the scanner he held as she reached quickly for it.

Seeing the desperation that flashed across her face, he just as quickly pulled it closer to himself, out of her reach. “What are you doing in here at this hour? And why are you crying?”

Her jaw clenched and she stared at his chest, not answering as she reached uselessly for the scanner again, begging, “Gres, please, give it to me!”

“Why, what’s on here?” he glanced between her and the scanner’s screen, catching her hand and holding it as he tried to understand what was going on.

 _But she didn’t want him to understand…_ “No, please don’t read that!”

 _She should’ve jumped down from the table and wrenched the scanner out of his hand – or at least tried to,_ she thought too late. She watched the shadow fall over his face as he understood what he was reading, and a sudden sob burst out of her as she saw his pain. He squeezed her hand tighter, very deliberately placing the scanner on the table beside her and swallowing as he moved to stand in front of her. “Sam,” he asked again, his voice nearly a whisper and scratchy now. “What does that mean?”

She swallowed and drew in a few deep breaths, trying desperately to get her tears under control so she could give him an answer. _If she couldn’t hide the whole truth from him to spare him, then she had to give him the whole truth._ When she was sure she could speak with a steady voice once again, she murmured, “I missed my period last month. So – and I know I jumped the gun here, I know – I wondered if maybe… I was pregnant. But I couldn’t run any conclusive tests that early on with the medical equipment I have here. But this month, my period was back, heavily, which could make sense if I’m just being irregular, but I wanted to make sure, now that I could get a conclusive response from my equipment.”

“At two in the morning?” he asked, still struggling to understand the minutia… so that he didn’t yet have to understand the bigger picture that she was saying.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she offered obligingly. “And I didn’t want to worry you if it was unnecessary.”

“Is it? Necessary for me to worry, I mean?” He was focusing on her, moving to cup her cheeks in his hands as he brushed the drying tears from her face and leaned in to kiss her brow.

“I was, Gres,” she choked out, determined not to cry again. “Pregnant. Two months pregnant.” She gestured helplessly to the scanner, informing him, “You had a son. But… I lost him. I’m sorry.”

Gres stepped closer, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close enough that she could hear his alien heartbeat. “Don’t you dare,” he said, quiet and fierce, her constant point of calm and love no matter what the universe threw at them. “Don’t you dare apologize to me, Sam; you couldn’t have done anything to stop it. We’ve discussed this, remember?” he reminded her logically, sitting down at her side only to hug her once again. “We want children, but it’s just not possible on this ship, not right now. You know better than I do what that means.”

_It meant that the two of them had incompatible blood types, and the baby would need a procedure in utero – before the heart even began to beat – to make sure that the blood the baby’s heart eventually did try to pump would be sufficient. The incompatible DNA they’d supplied as parents hadn’t been able to come together properly to supply workable blood to their baby, so he’d just… stopped growing and passed from her body without her even knowing when it had happened._

She knew that Gres had purposefully tried to sidetrack her with the logic and science of it all, but she honestly didn’t care, and it didn’t really help her feel better despite the fact that she understood that it was no one’s fault. She did, but it still hurt.

They’d had a _son_.

“Sweetheart, what do you need?” Gres asked gently, leaning back to look at her when he correctly interpreted her silence to mean that she still wasn’t feeling any better about their loss.

She searched his face, considering his question before she said suddenly – knowing it was completely impractical, but needing it anyway – “I want him to have a name.”

It gave her grief substance, she thought, gave her something that felt a little more solid to pin her emotions on.

“Okay.” He agreed readily without missing a beat. “What name do you like?”

“I like…” She almost said “Greskrendtregk,” but she didn’t want to give her husband’s name to their deceased baby, she wanted to save it for the hypothetical child they had that _lived_. “Noah.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More canon-typical violence, more miscarriage.

The stars had aligned, or the gods had smiled upon them, or _something_ – _most likely someone had been feeding the necessary parties her medical information, if she was practically considering things_ – and the next time they landed on a planet to get supplies, Gres returned with a fully-functional Starfleet-grade medical tricorder. Given how they’d met, Sam didn’t ask how he’d gotten it, but she knew with one look at him _why_ he’d gotten it, and it wasn’t just to make her life as a medic easier.

That night as he pulled her into his arms in their bed, he whispered, “I want to try again.”

“We can’t, Gres, not here. Even if I do get pregnant, there’s no way the procedure to make a baby’s blood viable could happen on this ship.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he promised, kissing her. “I’ll mutiny, if that’s what it takes, to get this ship to land on a planet where they can do the procedure as soon as you need it.”

 _She wanted a baby with this wonderful man,_ Sam thought again, not at all for the first time, but she was surprised at the ferocity with which the thought reoccurred to her. And she believed him when he said that he would do whatever it took to make sure that their child survived.

He watched her watch him for a second, gave her time to think, to shove him away if that was what she really wanted, but when she didn’t, he rolled on top of her, leveraging up on his elbows to hover over her. He leaned slowly in to kiss her, requesting, “Make love to me, m’lady.”

_And, really, how was she supposed to refuse such a sincere request as that?_

* * *

Three months later, her husband had proven to be the man of his word that Sam knew he was. The day after she so much as mentioned to Gres that the time for the procedure was coming close, Commander Chakotay had uncharacteristically ordered a trip down to a planet’s surface before they technically needed it. The trip had lasted just long enough for Sam to admit herself to a hospital – under a false name, just in case – for the procedure that would keep their baby alive. They returned to _Karma_ in good spirits but made the mutual decision to keep her pregnancy a secret until it started becoming too noticeable to hide; there would be less worry over her that way, she reasoned.

This baby – in a flash of optimism after the surgery, she and Gres had named him Nathan – lasted thirteen weeks before hell broke loose on _Karma._ She knew the ship was old, but Torres and her sometimes-disconnected team had done a good job of keeping it stable. She’d never been afraid that the ship might fall out from under them – until now, in the middle of a firefight with a Cardassian ship, with the hull creaking and phaser fire echoing all around as she went from one wounded Maquis to the next.

She counted twenty wounded, which meant there was only ten crewmen trying to man the ship and fight back the Cardassians. _Dear gods,_ those were not odds she liked.

Even as the thought occurred to her, a sheet of metal broke off the wall along a line of rust, flying towards her when the ship veered dangerously onto its side. She never even saw the debris coming as it slammed into the back of her head and sent her careening, unconscious, into the door to the bridge.

* * *

There were three escape pods aboard _Karma_ , each one large enough to fit ten people apiece. Sam knew this, but as she slowly came to where she lay on the floor of one of the capsules, she only counted four people above her. _Gres, the commander, Torres, and Molinez. Where was everyone?_

She didn’t realize she’d asked the question aloud until Torres answered flatly, “There are ten people in the first pod we sent out; this is the rest of us.”

“What about the other half of us?” Sam asked warily. “How long was I out for?”

“Long enough for five of the wounded to die from their wounds before we’d noticed they weren’t being treated,” Molinez answered sourly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gres asked, his voice dangerously low in a way that Sam hadn’t heard very often. Yet she barely registered his tone as her insides twisted so sharply she thought she might be sick.

Commander Chakotay stepped bodily between the two men, ordering, “Enough out of the both of you. It’s been a long day, but that’s no Maquis fault.”

Sam heard him mutter something about “the damn Cardassians” as she pointed out, “That still doesn’t account for ten crewmen.”

“Dead where we found them,” Torres said shortly. “From blown relay explosions and flying debris.”

“We didn’t even have time to sync destinations for the escape pods, so we’ve lost the other ten crewmembers, too,” Molinez pointed out. “It’s just us with no ship.”

“’No ship?’”

“We barely had time to get to the pods before _Karma_ all but fell into pieces around us,” Torres informed her.

Sam whimpered – _from pain,_ she noted distantly, _physical pain, not because of anything that had been said._ “Gres.” She gripped his ankle, doing her best to sit up properly, only to gasp as her midsection cramped. But she had seen enough of what was happening to her own body, the thin trail of red coming from between her legs, to announce distantly, “I’m bleeding.”

Everyone but Molinez hit their knees, surrounding her so that there was no room for Molinez to do anything but stand even if he had wanted to help.

“What hurts?” Torres asked.

“My abdomen is cramping,” she said.

“Were you cut there by more debris?” the commander asked.

She shook her head, tears already gathering in her eyes as she turned to Gres, taking his hand. “That’s not what this is. The concussive force of the blast, Gres, the stress the fighting puts on my body… I’m s—”

He pulled her close, burying his own tears in her hair before she could even get the words out. Another cramp clenched her insides, as good as squeezing the life out of their second child.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm going to stop noting the topic of miscarriage within each chapter if it's there; it's a theme that runs through this section of the story, and we all know it's here. Other than that, there's nothing noteworthy in this chapter.

Torres reconfigured the escape pod’s positioning system so that it changed course and landed on the roof of the nearest hospital that she could find. Hospitals were notoriously bad -as most things were – along the conflict lines, and Sam insisted that she didn’t actually need to be seen by a doctor, but the commander overrode her wishes, and into the hospital she went.

There, they could fix the lump on her head and her concussion, but there was nothing to be done to help Nathan. He flowed from her body as a clump of tissue while she lay on an unfamiliar bed on a bedraggled planet with her husband helplessly holding her hand.

She and Gres remained in the hospital overnight while the other three went in search of supplies, and, if they got very, very lucky, someone who knew where they might obtain another spaceship.

Gres was still holding her hand and sitting in the chair beside her – she wasn’t sure he’d even moved to sleep last night – as she looked out the window and announced hollowly, “I can’t keep doing this.”

“Which part of it?” Gres asked tiredly, his voice as layered with pain as hers.

Sam rolled her eyes to keep hot, hated tears from falling. She was trying to have a real conversation with him right now; there was no time for tears. “All of it? Gres, I had plans. Real plans for a good life that I could be proud of.”

“I know,” he answered, blinking back his own tears as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn to watch her. “You went to college, got your degree, and were getting ready to apply to Starfleet, like your dad, when the Maquis showed up on your doorstep. I know.”

She turned to meet his gaze, considering as she said, “We could still do that, you know.”

“Do what?”

“We don’t have to fight for the Maquis, no one is making us do this,” Sam began sitting up a little straighter. “I want peace as much as anyone, but… Gres, I’ve never even touched a phaser on _Karma_! I’m not a fighter, not like that, and I can do and put up with a lot of things – sleep on floors, wade through mud, go days without food, patch up dying people and watch them die anyway, I can do it – but…” her voice cracked, but she pushed on. “I want a family with you, impractical as it is in this war, and I _cannot_ keep watching, _feeling_ , that dream die like this.” She didn’t realize how true it was, how deeply she felt the conviction of it, until she said it aloud: “Even if the commander, Torres, and Molinez find another ship, I do not want to get on it.”

* * *

Gres asked for time to consider their options – all of them – for both of their sakes, and Sam agreed. She knew he was right, knew it was a bad idea to make such a huge decision directly after another loss, but they both knew they were still working with a limited timeframe. They had to make a decision before what remained of their battered crew got their hands on another starship.

Samantha was surprised at how little time it took, in fact. Commander Chakotay had no trouble recruiting people to join the Maquis, as the planet they were on was apparently full of people who were disgruntled about the state of their home. She couldn’t blame them, but as she watched Commander Chakotay and Torres’ cobbled-together plan still manage to fall into place, she grew more and more sure of the fact that she couldn’t rejoin them.

The last night of their stay on the surface before they lifted off in the new Maquis ship, the _Val Jean_ , she found herself totally unable to sleep on the hard hotel bed where she and Gres had been staying. Rolling over towards Gres, she wasn’t even surprised to see that he was awake too.

He spoke first, voicing what she’d been thinking for a week as he said, “We’re not going with this new crew, are we?”

“I don’t think so,” she admitted before correcting herself with a surer, “No, we’re not.”

Gres rolled over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. “Okay,” he agreed thoughtfully. “Where do we want to go, then?”

“Earth?” Samantha suggested.

Gres looked at her suddenly, his eyes filled with surprise. “Are you still thinking about Starfleet?”

“Maybe,” Sam admitted.

“Sam, we can’t. You know we can’t. If we go to Earth, we have to lie low, away from Starfleet, or we’ll be prosecuted – legally – for being Maquis.”

“We’re going to have to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders,” she realized aloud, feeling slightly horrified.

“Maybe not.”

“But maybe so!” She sat up. “We can’t raise a child like that!”

She drew in a deep breath, then another one, the realization of what she’d condemned herself to falling too hard and fast upon her after the week they’d had. It had been years since she’d had an anxiety attack, but she knew what it was when she felt it coming on; it wasn’t a sensation that was easily forgotten.

“Sam?” Gres asked, reaching for her hand as he sat up too.

“I’m okay,” she murmured distractedly, concentrating on her breathing, on getting the pressure in her chest to abate before it started to suffocate her.

“We can talk about it in the morning,” he said worriedly.

As she was, Samantha wasn’t about to object.

* * *

“You’re sure?” Samantha was surprised – and a little touched when it was Torres, not the commander, who posed the question to her and Gres the next morning.

“We are.” Gres slipped his hand into Samantha’s, glancing behind the commander and Torres at their new-to-them ship before he said, “Marriage has changed us, you’ve seen that I’m sure, and it’s changed…” he sighed. “Some of the things that we want out of life. And I’m afraid that some of those things cannot be had with the Maquis.”

“Of course,” Commander Chakotay said with an understanding nod, and the look in his eyes said he _did_ understand what Gres wasn’t spelling out. Both he and Torres had been there to see the beginnings of losing Nathan for themselves, and the commander was a smart man. He could put two and two together. “We’re sorry to see you go,” he added. “And sorry that you’ve given up on us,” Gres stiffened minutely beside Samantha as he heard the blow that he had expected the other man to land before letting them loose. Still, he redeemed somewhat himself in Samantha’s eyes when he added, “But a man’s loyalty to his family ought to come first. I don’t like it, but I can respect what you’re doing.”

Gres extended a hand to the commander, admitting, “I’ll take that,” as they shook hands. “Thanks for everything.”

“Thanks for your… service,” Commander Chakotay replied with a half-hearted smile. He shook Samantha’s hand as he offered, “Good luck to you both.”

“Thank you, commander.”

Torres was a good sport, following Commander Chakotay’s lead and shaking their hands, and then that was that. Commander Chakotay and Torres boarded the _Val Jean_ , and Samantha and Gres went back to their hotel room.

It was time for them to make some decisions.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's mentions of child sexual abuse and homelessness in this chapter, and also a dash of Samantha Wildman being too good for this world.

“You’re sure about Earth?”

“I am if you are.”

“Even if we never go near Starfleet?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been to Earth?”

“No. Have you?”

“No. So… let’s try it?”

“If you’re okay with it.”

“Earth it is, then!”

* * *

Gres got a job as a groundskeeper at a school – even though he was qualified to be a history teacher – and Samantha got a job as a nursing assistant, doing the least-desirable tasks a hospital offered a sentient being. All the better for them both to stay under the radar and avoid questions regarding where they’d come from.

They lasted all of a month working these jobs and living in an apartment with a landlord who ignored every issue the place had – but left his tenants alone too – before Samantha hazarded carefully, “If I could find a way to apply to Starfleet, I could get a _really_ good job and we could live in a decent place.”

“Sam.” Gres turned to her on the couch. “If you apply to Starfleet, they will take you in for questioning, arrest you for your role in the Maquis, _make you serve time_ , and then _maybe_ reevaluate your qualifications upon your release.”

“This isn’t the life we wanted,” Samantha said bluntly. “No, we’re not in an active warzone anymore, and I almost don’t know what to do with that fact it’s that nice, but look at where we _are_ , what we’re _doing_. We still can’t raise a kid like this! This still isn’t accomplishing the goals we have, or even working towards them.”

“And working in a penal colony will be working towards those goals?”

“Maybe, in a way, yes,” she said, not sure how to sort out what she was thinking.

“What?”

She put her head in her hands, sighed deeply, and tried to make it make sense anyway. “Gres, I have been looking over my shoulder since I was eleven years old and my stepbrothers started coming into my room at night. I lived in that house with them, feeling like a criminal for even existing there and a prisoner because I had to be there, for three years before I ran away from home. You want to know about looking over your shoulder and micromanaging everything you do so no one knows your secret? I lived on the streets for four years _while_ finishing general education and made sure none of my teachers ever realized. Then I got into college, and, sure, I had crappy roommates, but I got my life together, and I got my degree, and I met you, and…” she shook her head. “And you know all of that already. My _point_ is… this feels, to me, like living on the streets again. Emotionally, I mean, in the way it’s effecting my stress levels and—and my health, even. We’re just trying to do what it takes to live in safety, but I’m looking over my shoulder – literally, figuratively – all the time, waiting for someone to snatch me up. Gres, I don’t think I can do this again, _not_ for the rest of my life.”

“What are you saying? That you’d rather… what? That we turn ourselves in?”

He understood now where she was coming from, she could see that on his face, and he was trying to understand, and she loved him for it. Reaching for his hand, knowing she sounded a little insane, she admitted, “Yeah, maybe. If it means we serve sentences and then it’s done, and we can go on with our lives – the lives we _want_? Then I think it would be worth it.”

“Are you telling me that the idea of life on a penal colony doesn’t scare you?”

“No,” she snorted. “It doesn’t. I didn’t trust the trashy government systems on Ekaris III, and there was a time when I would’ve died rather than go into that foster care system. This, though, is not Ekaris III, and we’ve both been through enough that I have a feeling that an Earth penal colony will be very doable for the both of us.”

“You’re entirely serious,” he murmured the realization.

Her voice was quiet, small, even, as she admitted, “I am.”

* * *

_ 2370: _

They poured everything they had into getting the best legal counsel they could, turned themselves in, and told the authorities everything they wanted to know – _almost_ entirely without guilt regarding the Maquis, since the operation they’d been a part of had very literally fallen apart, and almost all of their crewmates were dead.

After spending the rest of the year in penal colonies – Gres in New Zealand, Sam in Madagascar ( _spending your first anniversary apart was the worst_ , Sam decided) – they were released in the first half of the following year, and reunited with one another in California.

They found themselves once more in a hotel room, sorting through their options. 

Gres stretched languidly on the bed, admitting, “My leg feels so much lighter without that tracker.”

Samantha curled into him and did not admit that, having served her sentence, getting it over and done with, her _conscience_ felt lighter, too.

“So.” Gres kissed her hair as he pulled her close, then her forehead, her cheeks, her lips, before he rolled so that he was hovering over her. “After this, I think we should go to San Francisco.”

“Why?” Samantha asked distractedly, a little too concerned with the “this” that he had mentioned to bother with the rest of what he’d said.

He grabbed her hand where she’d rested it on his cheek, kissed her knuckles with a broad smile. “Do you still have your graduation and certification records?”

She shook her head. “Not the physical papers, but there will be electronic records somewhere, yes.”

“Then you should find out where, because you, Samantha Wildman, my beautiful, brilliant wife, are free and clear to apply for a position at Starfleet.”

* * *

To say that Samantha was just given a position at Starfleet would’ve been a great selling-short of what she actually did. She attended Starfleet Academy as a student teacher for the next year while simultaneously getting her doctorate in xenobiology – thanks to a doubled course load – and cadet’s physical training. It was a different sort of taxing than being aboard _Karma_ , and while, afterward, she wouldn’t have gone back to it, the workload was a welcome challenge while she was in the midst of it all.

Most nights, she stumbled into the apartment where she and Gres lived in San Francisco already half asleep, which was just as well with her husband, because he had made himself just as busy running an antiques shop out of their home – his way of putting his nearly-forgotten history degree to use. 

It was a grueling year, but they both agreed that it felt remarkably good to bet back to paths that were far closer to what they’d each envisioned for their lives. And at the end of the year, with her graduation from Starfleet Academy so close Samantha could practically see it already, Gres suggested one more crazy thing.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I did something in this story that I don't think I've done before: I included a character from a show that I haven't really watched. I've not watched anything more of DS9 than random YouTube clips, but I knew I wanted to include Dr. Bashir in this story, so I watched a lot of YouTube clips that focused on him, and I'm hoping for the best! Hopefully I didn't get his characterization too far off.

“I don’t want you to say ‘yes’ right away, but don’t rush to ‘no,’ either, okay?”

Gres handed her a glass of wine as he sat down on the couch across from her, and Samantha took it, giving him a dubious look before she turned back to the PADD of coursework she was studying. “Are you _trying_ to make me nervous?”

“No,” Gres leaned over, slowly sliding the PADD off her lap and away from her. “I just want to give you something to think about. Only think about it for now; I don’t want an answer until after your graduation.”

Her work having been so carefully stolen for the moment, Samantha gave Gres her full attention, as he clearly wanted, and took a small sip of her wine. “Alright…?”

“Have you heard of a Dr. Julian Bashir?”

Samantha nodded. “He’s stationed on Deep Space 9; I’ve read about some of his work in my studies. Why?”

Gres looked down into the Ktarian beer he’d replicated for himself, tapping the glass nervously with his fingernails as he asked, “Have you heard about his work with interspecies genetics?”

A slow knot formed in the bottom of her stomach as she got an inkling of where he was going with this conversation. “I have.”

Hearing the change in her tone, Gres looked up at her, saying, “It sounds like he’s had real success with… interspecies fertility treatments, Sam.”

She was already shaking her head. “I know that, but that’s not our problem, Gres – not fertility, such as the term is generally used, I mean. We’ve never had any problem getting pregnant; it’s me, I can’t stay pregnant.”

“Hey.” He reached for her while the words were still coming out of her mouth, his hand on her knee cool against the hot self-loathing the admission made well up in her. “Hey, no, it’s not ‘ _you_ can’t stay pregnant;’ it’s ‘ _our_ DNA needs assistance sustaining life.’…And I think Dr. Bashir could help us with that. Now… take a breath, and let’s take a step back here. Do you want to have children one day?”

She drew in the breath he’d requested of her, then answered simply, “Yes.”

“With me?”

Samantha blinked in surprise. “Of course. There’s no one else for me, you know that.”

“Okay. Then all I am asking you to do is consider that maybe one day, after your graduation, probably even after you get your first assignment, we might benefit from looking into getting another medical opinion about how to go about having the baby that we both want. I don’t want anything immediately; I just want you to think about it. Is it okay that I ask you to do that?”

She nodded, taking his hand from her knee and pulling him closer until it was around her shoulders and she was in the safety and comfort of his arms.

* * *

“So…” Gres met her at the door of their apartment, already smiling for her as she entered after her meeting at Starfleet headquarters. “Where’s our first assignment, Ensign Wildman?”

Samantha handed him the PADD without a word, her mind too focused on their previous conversation about Dr. Bashir to give him the attention he deserved – or to return the energy he was exuding. “I think this may be a sign, honey.”

Gres didn’t bother to look at the PADD, worry over what she knew had to be a strange expression on her face trumping his curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“I am supposed to report to Deep Space 9 in three weeks, family and all.”

“Deep Space 9,” he repeated. “You’re being posted on DS9?”

Now he looked at the PADD as she affirmed, “For the next year, yes.”

Gres narrowed his eyes at her, asking, “Sam… what’s this a sign of?”

“It’s more of a reminder,” she allowed, wrapping her arms lazily around his waist. “Of how much I want a baby with you. So, I am going to take this as a sign that, once we are settled, we should try again.”

“You’re sure?” he asked, a deepening furrow in his brow giving away his concern.

“I am very sure,” she promised steadily.

She knew it was a vast change from the wary replies she’d given him only weeks ago, but she was buoyed by her graduation, and an assignment that couldn’t have been more perfectly placed. Things were going to start going easier for them now that they were establishing a real life for _their_ family… and what better time to make their family of two a family of three?

* * *

_2371:_

_New year, new home, new hope,_ Samantha reminded herself, looking at the door to Dr. Bashir’s office. Sensing her nerves, Gres squeezed her hand where he held it between them. When she looked to him, he gave her a smile that he probably thought was reassuring, but he just looked as nervous as she was.

_One of them was going to have to go in first, in any case._

Drawing in a steadying breath, Samantha pushed the chime.

“Come in,” called a beautifully lilted voice. _He was from London, England,_ she recalled, stepping into the doctor’s workspace with Gres. “Greskrendtregk and Ensign Wildman, I presume?”

“Yes,” Samantha stepped forward and offered him her hand to shake. “Hello.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Dr. Bashir said, gesturing for Samantha to sit on the examination table.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us earlier than we had planned,” she offered, doing as instructed while Gres took up a seat in the corner of the room.

“Well, when you told me why you wanted to meet, I don’t see how I could’ve refused,” Dr. Bashir grinned at her, picking up a medical tricorder and requesting, “Lie back, please.” Samantha swallowed nervously as she did so, and the doctor glanced at her expression, saying kindly, “Don’t be nervous, ensign. This is a small check we’re doing today, really just a second opinion at this point. And anything else that comes next is just a… helping hand. Everyone needs a helping hand from time to time, don’t they?”

“That’s what I said,” Gres murmured to Dr. Bashir, even while giving Samantha an encouraging smile. “Or at least something like it.”

“Then it seems you both get to be correct today.” Dr. Bashir was smiling as he handed the medical tricorder to Samantha so that she could read the results. “Your suspicions were correct; you’re already expecting. A girl, two months along. Congratulations to you both.”

Gres laughed with glee, and Samantha bit her lip to keep from smiling too widely. “Thank you, doctor,” she replied on a breath.

“Not…” Dr. Bashir hesitated. “To put a damper on your happiness, but it would be in the best interest of everyone concerned if we did the blood merger as soon as possible. Can you come back in tomorrow, ensign?”

 _She would just have to switch shifts with someone,_ she decided without a second thought, answering, “Of course, doctor.”


	11. Chapter 11

When Samantha awoke around midnight that night, she knew something was… not as it should be, but she had no idea what it was until she had already stumbled into the bathroom and turned the light on. Her first tired thought was simply that her period had started unexpectedly.

_ Except her period shouldn’t have started at all, given the pregnancy…  _

Samantha inhaled deeply, forcing the trembling out of her limbs as she exhaled slowly. Forcing her mind to go blank and stay that way for the time being – _not horribly difficult, given the hour_ – she pulled down her pajama bottoms and underwear for a moment, just to check. And there was the blood. 

_ Was the universe really going to be this cruel? The blood merger was in the morning; they were just hours away from their baby being safe _ , she thought as she eased her way back through the darkness of their bedroom. 

_ So, maybe it wasn’t as easy to keep her mind blank as she had hoped it would be. _

_ There was still a chance, though, that they had estimated the gestation time wrong, and everything was fine.  _ Dr. Bashir had to have been sure to be willing to do the surgery so soon, but Sam didn’t let herself consider that. _There was still a chance,_ in her mind, _and the least she could do was scan herself with the medical tricorder she habitually kept with her work equipment._

Except, when she did so, there was no secondary living organism coming up in the scan besides what registered as Samantha Wildman. Sometime in the night, her baby had already stopped growing, and, as well as it – _she_ – could’ve without yet having a heartbeat in the first place, the baby had died.

She wept in near-perfect silence, trying to make sure that Gres, at least, got a good night’s sleep, as she went back into the bathroom to wash off and change her clothes. Returning to bed, she lay on her back, wrapped her arms around her cramping middle – _gods, she hated this feeling, and how well she knew it already_ – and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for morning to come.

* * *

_ Their home here really was beautiful,  _ Samantha thought idly, watching the sheer curtains – one of the few times in this place where she had ceded to beauty over functionality – sway in the air coming from the vents. _She was like those curtains,_ she thought, _pretty enough, but not capable of doing the thing that she had intrinsically been made for._

Gres rolled over to face her, as if her self-contempt had set off an automatic alarm in his own mind and woken him, but as he smiled lazily, leaned in and kissed her “good morning,” it was clear that he had no idea how she was going to have to ruin his day, wreck his hope one more time.

“Be right back,” he muttered, getting up and heading into the bathroom.

… _Where in her haze of tears and stupidity the night before, she’d left her bloodied clothes on the floor._

She was out of bed in an instant, saying, “Gres, wait, don’t—” She saw by the changing set of his shoulders that she’d spoken too late, that he’d already and seen and understood. Her tone changed from near panic to defeat as she finished, “…Find out that way.”

He was very still for a long, painful moment before he turned to face her, and he was crying, but somehow his voice remained level as he asked only, “When?”

She shook her head. “About midnight.”

“You could’ve woken me,” he said quietly, both of them stepping towards each other, but not touching, because if they did they knew they’d shatter together onto the floor, and some growing part of Samantha was _sick_ of crying about this. 

She was a person of science, dammit, and science _could_ and _would_ fix this, if she could get her timing right. _But how was she supposed to get her timing right when one of the first signs of pregnancy was what lead to the death of the babies in the first place?_

When she didn’t respond aloud, Gres said, as if he’d read her thoughts, “I think we should still keep our appointment with Dr. Bashir today.”

“Why?” 

“You’re the science officer here, but even I know that three miscarriages in under three years can’t be good for you, sweetheart. Wouldn’t it be a good idea for him to look you over anyway?”

“I can tell you what he’ll find: a perfectly healthy woman with a midsection that’s cramping like hell and hormone levels that are changing by the half-minute right now. That’s all.”

He was being gentle, but it was clear that he wasn’t backing down, either, and if they found themselves in a true battle of wills the time of their appointment would be long gone before they’d ever reached a decision that satisfied them both. “Please, Sam, I’m worried about you.”

She didn’t insult him or belittle her own struggle and tell him there was no reason for that worry. Instead she sighed, deciding the least she could do was give into him in this as she agreed, “Okay. We’ll keep the appointment.”

* * *

“I was terrifically sorry to hear about the turn of events when you contacted me this morning, Ensign Wildman,” Dr. Bashir offered. “But I do still have good news to offer you both.”

“Oh?” Gres asked quietly.

_ Everything about him had been quieter today, more muted, _ Samantha had noted earlier, and it was still holding true. His tone, his bearing, his expression… her husband seemed smaller and more defeated than she had ever seen him, and she’d seen him unconscious and all but bleeding out on the floor of _Karma_.

“For one thing,” the doctor replied. “You were correct, ensign, in your belief that you are physically fine, ‘fit as a fiddle.’ All of the miscarriages have occurred early enough in gestation that there’s been no lasting effects on your body.”

Samantha nodded, not bothering to find words just yet.

Dr. Bashir looked between her and Gres with the smallest line of worry between his eyebrows; she knew they were both being quiet, and incredibly subdued, but she didn’t know what else he expected on a day that had started out the way this one had. After a second of awkwardness, he added, “There is more good news, if you’d like it?”

Samantha looked over at him then. _How?_ “What is it?”

Carefully, he reminded them, “We all know – at least I hope we all realize – that this is merely a matter of… botched timing. The procedure that you need isn’t difficult, but it is very precise, and it must be done at a very precise time in the early gestation period.”

“Yes, we do know that,” Samantha assured him tonelessly.

“So,” Dr. Bashir folded his hands in his lap, speaking empathetically as he said, “I feel obligated to point out that though this may feel like a defeat today… it doesn’t in any way have to be the end of the proverbial war. You have yet to allow me to actually use my medical capabilities for your family, and _if_ the two of you wish to continue, if you intend to try to conceive again, I would suggest—” here she turned to Samantha exclusively, checking, “As a science officer, you have been issued a medical tricorder, I presume?”

“Medical science is adjacent to my primary function here, so, yes, I have been.”

“Good. When you begin trying to conceive again, I would strongly suggest you run a scan every two weeks to check for a pregnancy. Either you can do it yourself in your home, or I’ll do it here. Don’t wait until your cycles change, just run the scans, make a habit of it, and as soon as the scans show a pregnancy, let me know. That would give us another four to six weeks or so to plan for the procedure before it becomes necessary, and there should be no reason why we can’t manage it as long as we stay a step ahead of the game, as it were.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Gres remarked.

Dr. Bashir gave him an encouraging smile as he promised, “That’s because it really can be.”


	12. Chapter 12

“I can’t say I was expecting to hear from you so soon!” Dr. Bashir admitted five weeks later.

“I can’t say as we were actively… trying for this result already,” Samantha replied over her communicator. This time around, after losing a daughter they’d named Nia, it was Gres who seemed to have taken a real step back after he’d been the first one to express interest in trying again, only to have the same result as with Noah and Nathan.

The doctor chuckled before asking, “How progressed is the pregnancy?”

“Only a couple of weeks.”

“You’re aware that this is… fast, after the miscarriage, I assume.”

Samantha swallowed nervously, but kept her tone level as she replied, “I am.”

“Were the first two… conceptions so close together?”

“They were both in ’69, but not this close together, no.”

“Right. Well, there’s nothing to be done about that now,” Dr. Bashir replied, as chipper as ever. “Thank you for telling me your exciting news. If either of us have any further questions, we’ll contact the other, alright?”

“Of course.”

“Otherwise, I will see you in my office in… let’s say a month to discuss the details of the procedure that’s to come?”

Samantha looked down at the PADD in her hands – orders for a mission – as she replied, “A month from now would be perfect.”

* * *

“Do you have to go? _Now_ , I mean?”

Watching her husband, Samantha wasn’t sure if Gres was actively worried, or just sulking at the idea of her absence. She decided it was a little of both as she pointed out, “Yes. That’s why they’re called ‘orders,’ Gres; I would’ve thought your time with the Maquis would’ve taught you that.”

He snorted. “You and I both know that the Maquis were a lot less structured and put-together than Starfleet will ever be.”

“True,” she allowed with a small smile. “But you do understand that I do have to go, though no one is telling you that you have to like it. I didn’t expect you to be thrilled with my first _away mission_ , after all. Just be glad it’s as short as it is.”

“I do understand,” he admitted. “I get that this is what – in a sense – _we_ signed up for, it’s just… now? _Right_ after we found out about the pregnancy?” 

Looking into his eyes, Samantha changed her opinion again. He wasn’t sulking; he was genuinely worried… and letting his worry get the best of him. “Yes,” she reached over to cup his face in her hands, “Right now.” She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss before adding, “And, frankly, if selfishly, I think this might even be a good thing for me, in a way.”

“How’s that?”

“I’ll leave and be back right before we’re due to go see Dr. Bashir, so I’ll be busy the whole time I would otherwise be stewing and waiting for something to go wrong.”

“Which is a good point for you,” he ceded. “But what am I supposed to do while you’re gone?”

“Work your antiques stall? Cook with real ingredients instead of replicating your food? Clean our quarters?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, half-heartedly teasing in an effort to lighten his own mood. “What _interesting_ things am I supposed to do to distract myself?”

“Make friends with someone, Gres,” she suggested, suddenly being perfectly serious. “We’ve been here months, but you had more friends on _Karma_ – in San Francisco, even – then you do here.”

“They were all work friends in California, and technically even aboard _Karma_.”

“Go _socialize_ ,” she stressed again. “You’re far more social than I am, and I don’t like that you’re not getting out as much here.”

“And during the free time when I don’t feel like socializing?” he questioned.

“Well, you like to tinker with mechanics and build things,” she suggested thoughtfully. “You could take the time living in a single-person household to fill our living area with some big project – as long as it’s not still taking up the entire living room when I get home.”

He was starting to grin, his eyes twinkling, and his spirits sufficiently lifted, as he pulled her gently to him. “You make it sound like so much fun to be without you, m’lady.”

“Maybe it will be,” she teased.

He widened his eyes pathetically, lowering his chin in a way that was supposed to make her pity him but only made her laugh as his antics. “I bet it won’t be.”

She put her palms on his chest, stared steadily into his face. _Gods, she loved this ridiculous man!_ “You will be fine, Gres. And I will be fine, and our baby will be fine, and our time apart will fly right by, and I’ll be back before you know it. Alright?”

“Okay.”

She kissed his childish pout away, knowing all the while it was now only there to make her smile. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

* * *

_ Five weeks later _

Samantha ran her own words back through her mind as she walked to _Voyager_ ’s sickbay.

_ “You will be fine, Gres.” Well… she dearly hoped he would be, though she had no idea what he was thinking right now, or how  _ anyone _was handling_ Voyager _’s disappearance at Deep Space 9._

_ “I will be fine.” She was trying very hard to make that true, for hers and Gres’ baby, if not for her own sake. _

_ “Our baby will be fine.” She was trying very hard to make that true, too; in fact, that was why she was on her way to sickbay at all right now. To talk to the EMH about the blood merger, and, if her gut instinct was right, have the procedure done while she was there. _

_ “Our time apart will fly right by.” The past five weeks had, in fact, done that, though not at all with the end result that she had expected. _

_ “I’ll be back before you know it.” Despite her mission parameters, she had been terribly, terribly wrong about that. _

_ Well,  _ she decided, coming to the door to sickbay, _being right about four out of five of her declarations wasn’t so bad._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to pop in here and say "thank you" for the reviews and kudos to this story! Hearing what you guys think of my stories feeds my inspiration and eagerness to continue writing more!


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